I'm always very sad whenever a bookshop closes in HK. All the English bookshops are closing or are going to close one day due to a lack of interest from the average joe, and meanwhile I'm busy trying to buy and finish all the James Bond novels, which is a pretty hard task at the moment.

Of course, I could always order online, but the wait is just agonizing.

I acquired and read all of the Sherlock Holmes books at the end of the past year. I also bought the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and am finally reading through it. I'm in the final book at the moment.

Dolphins are some of the smartest animals, yes, but by human standards… Let's say you should praise the god that forces them to stay handless and underwater.

Fun. Though, indeed, I became a little bit less interested after reading three entire books and the fourth I dragged over a few months. Should've taken a break and read something else in the meantime.

My main complaint would be, Watsonially speaking, historical values dissonance. Although I enjoyed the points made against racism, the treatment of women was, well, besides the obvious, pretty... boring. "The most beautiful woman one has ever seen" loses its meaning after the fourth or fifth time it's used. I know for a while it was a pretty common descriptor in literature, but reading the entire series at once as I did made it lose its meaning fairly quickly. Doylistically speaking, we were never given all the details Sherlock Holmes had available to do his work, which disappointed me because I wouldn't be able to try and guess myself the solution to the mysteries. Not that I think I would be able to do so, but I would have liked to at least have been tricked into thinking that I could.

Also, I just finished the entire Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (a few days ago, because I didn't have internet for a while).

Dolphins are some of the smartest animals, yes, but by human standards… Let's say you should praise the god that forces them to stay handless and underwater.

Well, I can see why you got frustrated with those parts. Then again, Watson's always doing that because he's a gigantic womanizer and he's gotten married twice.

I have similar issues with the Bond novels. Bond is badass and otherwise great, but of course, the novels were written in the 50s and early 60s, so there's:

-Misogyny, especially in Casino Royale.-Racism against blacks in Live And Let Die. He gets better later on and actually hates racism against blacks, but...-...Racism against Koreans in Goldfinger. Apparently Bond thinks Koreans are lower than apes. I sidestep that by headcanon-ing that Goldfinger hires North Koreans, but seriously, Fleming, you did that because the Korean War was on? Dude. No. Worse, Bond never gives this one up. -There's some very mild homophobia in the early novels, due to the whole taboo on it in 50s Britain. Bond later defends them, though, although he's still struggling to understand same-sex attraction, being in the 50s and all.

Yeah, he married Mary Morstan, until he states that she's passed away in Norwood Builder. Later in The Casebook, Sherlock mentions that Watson's deserted him for a new wife. So he got married twice.

And yes, the movies do a good job of addressing those issues. I do enjoy Literary Bond on the whole, especially as James soon drops those negative aspects and becomes much more of a hero and continues showing that he's extremely Badass. But those little bits of Values Dissonance are always going to be present in the early books.

I'm so sorry. I hadn't checked in for a while and hadn't noticed that the site was down. As soon as I noticed I began working on getting it back up again.

I'm so, so sorry. I should be paying more attention.

For the record, I'm @Sophira on Twitter. Please don't hesitate to let me know if there's an issue with the site; I'm basically the sole sysadmin behind it and while I do check in regularly, it's not every day. I'd have seen the issue sooner or later, but it definitely doesn't hurt to have more points of contact.

I'm certainly not abandoning the site, though. I'm sorry I haven't been able to get the other TWWF sites up yet, too.

[edit: Oh, I forgot to mention - if I ever decided that the site would be going down, I would definitely ensure that everybody knows about it ahead of time. I wouldn't just take it down with no warning, I promise.]

The issue is the age of the WordPress installation in use for watchthefootage.com's blog; people were hammering some of the more known-to-be-exploitable files in an attempt to hack the server, and this had the effect of causing the web server to consume more and more memory until things just simply fell over. I've now disabled access to the more common exploitable files since they aren't necessary to use the site, but in the long run I really need to look into converting it to static HTML. It's the same issue that's plaguing my decisions on how to bring the ezblog.co sites back up, actually.

WordPress is a *very* popular blogging platform, and as such it's a very popular target for people to try to hack. As far as I can tell, nobody actually hacked us in this case, so I believe we're good.

So I passed my exams, graduated from high school and I'm getting ready to leave to the USA for college next month. The college is near Seattle, Washington, and I'm planning to major in history.

I just want to say thank you to everyone here. It's been a long while since we've all worked together, I know, but this was one of the most valuable experiences I've had in my life. Coming here as a 12 year-old kid seriously obsessed with TF2, suffering from ADHD and Asperger's, I wasn't the easiest person to deal with. I said some things I shouldn't have that I deeply regret, and was bratty at times. But throughout this, I made friends from all across the world-shout out to Genndy and Victin for being awesome bros-and learned to work with different people. I enjoyed solving the mysteries and interacting with the different fictional characters throughout the ARG-at a time in my life which was difficult, this helped distract me from my ongoing problems. And when the ARG was over, the fun didn't stop-I briefly participated in Floating Castle, I played the Tram of Thought, I posted random shit in the Coffee Room. I wasn't into the same works of fiction as many of you, so I didn't really know what you were talking about. But despite all this, I was one of you-I was a Metaguard and a troper, part of this big, happy, occasionally crazy family that I will never leave due to the sheer awesomeness.

Wherever any of you are, whatever stage your lives are at now, I wish you all the best. I'm proud to have met you all, and gotten to know you as best as I can. And remember-no matter how many geographical boundaries or time zones separate us, we're all Metaguards.

Congratulations, Pyro! Best of luck to you. I don't know what were your experiences in school, but college has been very different from high school and anything else I've ever done before. And I've been really enjoying it. I hope you enjoy it too.

I loved and still love the ARG and everything else that came after it. I had the amazing fortune of meeting all of the Metaguards. All of which are awesome people, I must say.

And: don't worry, Pyro. Looking back at past you and reflecting at things you have done is common. I too did a lot of stuff I cringe and feel bad about, because I worry I might've hurt people. But this is a sign of growth, that you've progressed and gotten better, smarter, more civil, etc. Hopefully, it is something that a person will be doing forever. On this particular topic, I quote Plato: "I know that I know nothing," because one can only learn something knew is if they don't know it already.

I thank you for your kind words, and, once more, I wish you the best of luck, and good studies.

Dolphins are some of the smartest animals, yes, but by human standards… Let's say you should praise the god that forces them to stay handless and underwater.

Victin wrote:Congratulations, Pyro! Best of luck to you. I don't know what were your experiences in school, but college has been very different from high school and anything else I've ever done before. And I've been really enjoying it. I hope you enjoy it too.

I loved and still love the ARG and everything else that came after it. I had the amazing fortune of meeting all of the Metaguards. All of which are awesome people, I must say.

And: don't worry, Pyro. Looking back at past you and reflecting at things you have done is common. I too did a lot of stuff I cringe and feel bad about, because I worry I might've hurt people. But this is a sign of growth, that you've progressed and gotten better, smarter, more civil, etc. Hopefully, it is something that a person will be doing forever. On this particular topic, I quote Plato: "I know that I know nothing," because one can only learn something knew is if they don't know it already.

I thank you for your kind words, and, once more, I wish you the best of luck, and good studies.

The best of luck to you too, man. And thanks for the advice-it's difficult for me to get over the bad memories too. School was...well, not exactly the most pleasant experience for me. It did get better in senior year, though.

Then again, hindsight is everyone's (and a historian's) best friend. Every Metaguard I've met was awesome, and some taught me valuable life lessons - looking back at one incident, Adell managed to stop me from being a callous edgelord, and I'm grateful to him for that.

Calculus I went off swimmingly, Calculus 2 was harder but I managed to do it, and I don't think I've learned Calculus 3 well. The professor hasn't released our grades yet (despite the fact next semester is starting next week), but, quite frankly, I wouldn't feel bad if I flunked it because I don't think I did very well >_>

Dolphins are some of the smartest animals, yes, but by human standards… Let's say you should praise the god that forces them to stay handless and underwater.

Victin wrote:Calculus I went off swimmingly, Calculus 2 was harder but I managed to do it, and I don't think I've learned Calculus 3 well. The professor hasn't released our grades yet (despite the fact next semester is starting next week), but, quite frankly, I wouldn't feel bad if I flunked it because I don't think I did very well >_>

I'm sure you'll get better! It's a difficult subject, but it's vital for many courses. For the college I'm going to, a lot of the science subjects require calculus.

Indeed it's important. I think it was a combination of me not giving the best I could and the teachers not being great. But, overall, I think I've learned a lot, except how to do well at exams XD I'm awfully slow. I was getting better, but I suddenly got worse. It doesn't help I have had exams that take about 24 hours to finish, and the usual exams that take two hours (and maybe a little more if you're lucky and the teacher allows it).

Dolphins are some of the smartest animals, yes, but by human standards… Let's say you should praise the god that forces them to stay handless and underwater.